'Embedded journalism', a rather ugly term loaded with sinister implications, first came to prominence in the media coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It refers to the system in which reporters, TV crews and photographers become contractually attached to military units to gain access to armed conflict. The US media complained vociferously about lack of opportunities during the first Gulf War, and subsequently the US military allowed many hundreds of journalists to become embedded with the troops during the invasion against Saddam Hussein.

Stern critics of this system, and there are many, look on such a relationship with the military as a pact with the devil. Milder sceptics mutter about how impossible it is for embedded journalists to take a critical stance; censorship, they say, direct or indirect, is inevitable. Colonel Rick Long of the US Marine Corps appeared to confirm these worst fears with these words: 'Frankly, our job is to win the war. Part of that is information warfare. So we are going to attempt to dominate the information environment.'

The American journalist Guy Talese was more acid: 'Those correspondents who drive around in tanks and armored personnel carriers are spoon-fed what the military gives them and they become mascots for the military ... There are stories you can do that aren't done.'

Compliance?

The British photographer Tim Hetherington, who won the World Press Photo contest two years ago with an image from Afghanistan, explains what happens when you are embedded with the US Army: 'You have to sign an agreement with the military that effectively removes the possibility of anyone suing them should you be injured or killed. It's pretty standard that you have to get permission from a wounded soldier to publish their picture, and before printing the image of a dead soldier, you need to ensure that the army has had time to notify the family.' Nevertheless, his gut instinct is that the army frown upon the media reproducing images of dead or wounded soldiers - and may put a black mark against the photographer's name in the future.

Embedded journalists have to abide by military rules but, says Hetherington, these rules change from month to month depending on army policy at the time. This may have worked in his favour; in 2007, the US military actively encouraged coverage of the war in Afghanistan, feeling that the conflict there was being ignored and events in Iraq were taking precedence. In June 2007, Hetherington got permission to go to the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan; he followed a platoon of soldiers for their entire deployment, staying with them for 13 months in their small outpost. As a result, unlike many photographers limited to quick in-and-out press trips, he was able to produce a close, sustained and authoritative body of work.

Hetherington accepts there is a culture of distrust of photographers who choose to be embedded but emphasises he was never asked to show his photographs to the military for approval. He also refutes the suggestion of self-censorship: 'I broadcast a dead US soldier on ABC news that was viewed by 22 million people. I showed on US network TV images of the aftermath (three hours later) of an Apache helicopter attack on a house that killed five Afghans and wounded ten others (mostly women and children).'

Like Hetherington, Sean Smith, a Guardian staff photographer and veteran of six trips to Iraq and four to Afghanistan, is complimentary about his experience with the Americans: 'I didn't feel there were any restrictions on what I could photograph, apart from not giving away military secrets and not releasing images of dead or wounded soldiers until their families had been notified.'

However, Smith is scathing about British control of the news agenda: 'It's a complete disgrace, total censorship. The worst thing is the media have colluded with it all and the British military establishment seem not to be accountable to the Government, let alone the media.' Control is exercised by the Ministry of Defence who make it very difficult for photographers to get embedded in the first place, then severely limit the amount of time and access given to them. 'It's outrageous that the British media hasn't been more critical at this lack of access,' he says.

Both Smith and Hetherington agree that the soldiers on the ground, even some of the higher up officers, appreciate the presence of photographers and want the realities of what they are experiencing to be shown to the general public. Hetherington recalls: 'I was filming a soldier who had just been shot and his friends were crying over the body. One of them freaked out on me but later the same day, he apologised and said he understood why I was there and appreciated our presence.'

Critical debate

On the blog, No Caption Needed (nocaptionneeded.com), academic and writer David Campbell took photographers covering Iraq and Afghanistan to task for the limited and restricted vision of these conflicts their work provides. 'Embedding photojournalists with combat units was one of the military's greatest victories in the Iraq war,' he stated. 'By narrowing the focus in time and space to the unit they were with, the images produced put brave soldiers front and center, with both context and victims out of range.'

Campbell feels the stories emerging from these war zones are remarkably similar in both content and approach. Combat scenes are repeatedly pictured: 'The local community is largely unseen, except for when they encounter the Americans, and never heard. They are rendered as part of an inhospitable environment in which civilians are hard to distinguish from "the enemy".'

In a politely strenuous response, Hetherington defended his practice. He stressed that his main intention was to convey the experiences of young soldiers in the front line in a thorough and revealing way. 'While on the surface my work may appear similar to others, I think - on balance - it is different in approach and content. I think this is because I mined the embed system beyond what it was designed for ... No one else, to my knowledge, had followed a group of US soldiers for an entire deployment - strangely, a novel approach. Consequently, the trust we built up has allowed us to tell a much more complex story - with fundamentally deeper and more insightful content.'

Hetherington agrees with Campbell that we are not being given a single comprehensive view of the Afghan war, but asks, 'How many wars have been comprehensively covered while they are ongoing?' He does not claim to give a total picture of the Afghan war but sees his work there as part of a longterm editorial strategy. His images have already brought wide publicity, his film, Restrepo, will premiere at the Sundance Film festival in January 2010, and National Geographic has bought worldwide TV rights. He is working on a book about the group of soldiers he lived with and has produced video and multimedia projects.

Outside eye

Alixandra Fazzina is a freelance photojournalist who has been based in Islamabad for just over a year. Like Campbell, she vehemently criticises photographers and editors who do not look beyond the system. 'They have come to accept the rules and seem happy to tell stories only from the embedded perspective so that the face of war comes only from the side of those who fight it,' she says.

She acknowledges that embedded photographers are likely to get 'strong' frontline images - dusty scenes of soldiers jumping out of helicopters, soldiers kicking in doors, terrified civilians responding in shock and so on, but feels that these situations have become formulaic and reveal little about the real effects of conflict on civilians caught up in a war zone. 'I prefer to work among the local population, looking at day-to-day things, trying to show what it is like being in a village that is being shelled,' she says.

Fazzina has been working on a longterm story about a village in the Swat valley in Pakistan called Charbagh, which used to be a Taliban operation centre. She feels this offers her a different kind of story to those emerging from Afghanistan. 'I speak a bit of the language and have found that as a woman, I can get great access into people's homes - I am allowed to enter houses without knocking on the door and am welcomed in. Of course, I don't behave like a silly foreigner, it's important not to work in a stupid, insensitive way.'

But the 'War on Terror' has made life a lot more difficult for independent freelancers. Fazzina says: 'A few years ago I could literally wander off into the mountains and hook up with a rebel group, but these days journalists and photographers are almost seen as legitimate targets. There is no way I would ever try and meet the Taliban for example - not only because of the grave risk to my life but because they demand money.'

As an independent, Fazzina lacks the built-in protection that embedding would offer, but she has constructed her own safety net. She cultivates reliable contacts, getting to know the right elders and the right families, and understands where it is safe or dangerous to go at any one time. She recognises that her work is harder to get published for the very reason that it does not consist of 'in your face' war-like images. On the other hand, she does get assignments because she is not embedded and therefore has more freedom of movement.

Propaganda

During his time in Iraq, the Dutch photographer Geert van Kesteren had a six-week assignment for Newsweek and chose to be embedded with the US Army in Samarra. He deliberately applied for a particular small army base because it was dangerous and he knew no PR minder would want to go there. 'I asked the soldiers how they win hearts and minds, and they said "Forget that, the Iraqi only understand fear". I asked them to show me how and they did so.' The disturbing images that resulted appeared in his highly praised book, Why Mister, Why?

Van Kesteren is scornful of embedding and feels that still and moving images have been co-opted into the propaganda function to influence public opinion. 'News is merchandise. That's why the media prefer images that are easy to understand, images as a lubricant to swallow the news fast.

'An army makes sure an embed does just that and now it's got even worse. Due to a lack of finance (and lack of good judgement), much of the media today uses photo material that comes directly from military photographers. Photography and film provide an illusion of objectivity, an illusion of being witness to an event, an illusion of direct emotional involvement. Leaders are very aware of this effect and the news media is an accepted integral part of modern warfare.'

Conclusions

For Fazzina the implications of embedded journalism are profound. 'Audiences are really beginning to loose sight of what war is and the devastation it causes,' she says. For Smith, control is the main issue: 'The mainstream media are allowing the British government and military to get away with it.'

Van Kesteren bemoans the lack of critical perspective: 'I think it (the media) should raise questions. A democracy gives you the luxury and obligation to be critical, instead we commercialise that privilege.' Only Hetherington appears to have emerged from the embedded experience with a sense that his overall body of work may make a longterm difference.

A final tangential question emerges from the embedded debate: will any images from Iraq or Afghanistan have comparable force in the communal memory to those famous pictures from the Vietnam war - the napalmed little girl running naked down the road, the street execution of a Viet Cong suspect, the burning monk in Saigon?

Perhaps what we recall from Iraq above all are those spooky Abu Ghraib prison pictures, trophy snapshots taken by soldiers. Maybe this is the final cost of the embedded system and the limited vision it offers - we see more and more images and remember less and less.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Colin Jacobson is the former picture editor of The Independent Magazine and a senior lecturer in photojournalism at the University of Westminster.